Have you ever worried about an elderly relative having an accident when they’re home alone, with no-one to help? How would they call anyone if their phone was out of reach? Leah Benthin finds out how this worry can be relieved, with the push of a button, thanks to LinCare.
“Hello Mr Hurst, your alarm has gone off, is everything okay?” As I sit in Clive Thomasson’s office in City Hall and listen to him taking a call from a client, his warm, gentle voice fills the room. It seems clear to me that he is always willing to help a vulnerable person in need, and after 30 years of working with such people, nearly two of these at LinCare, he certainly knows how to reassure someone in trouble and make them feel at ease.
The LinCare service, which Clive manages, provides elderly and disabled people with a monitoring system in their home which allows them to live an independent life, without fear. When they find themselves in need of help, users simply press a button hanging around their neck which sends a call to the control centre, where an experienced operator will answer and arrange for the relevant assistance.
Perks of the job
“I do find my job rewarding,” he tells me, as he sips on his cup of tea. “I find it helpful when I answer calls, it makes you feel quite good really.” As he tells me about his own experience of working for the service, he remembers one particular evening that stands out to him.
“One night I worked until 7pm and I phoned an ambulance for somebody at about 6.30pm. Then, when I went home I passed that house and saw the ambulance outside. That was really great because it was nice to know that they had got there and were helping, because of me.” However, the service doesn’t often hear back from clients that they call ambulances for, so they’re unaware of what happens to them once the call has ended, which Clive tells me “is a bit frustrating at times”.
With a 97.5% response rate to calls within 60 seconds, and only two members of staff answering calls at any one time, working for the service is most certainly a high-pressure role. In the week before I met Clive, the control centre had taken an extraordinary 987 calls in total, and they were just alarm calls alone. The centre also receives calls from door entry systems where they are required to let people into sheltered housing, general calls from the public, and calls to say that monitors have been unplugged or are low on battery.
Amazingly, of the 987 calls answered that week, only two took over 180 seconds to be answered. Clive said: “In both these cases, staff were on their own and were on another call, one that they couldn’t get off, like a 999 call.”
Call centre
Clive shows me how these calls come through to the control centre, and each type of call has a different colour to allow staff to identify the nature of the call. Yellow ones are voice calls for general enquiries, bright blue ones are potential emergency calls where the client has pressed the alarm or pulled the cord from their flat, and red ones are calls from smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.
But the service provides in many different ways, and I’m amazed to learn of another reason why people may have a lifeline. He said: “In the past, we’ve had someone who was fearing domestic violence and you can set these monitors to silent so it doesn’t say anything. That comes up as an orange call on our screen, and that tells us not to speak, just phone the police.” It seems there is no one this service can’t provide for, and Clive confirms this as he tells me that “if you want one you can have one”.
While we’re chatting, Clive takes the opportunity to show me some of his display models, so I can see exactly how they work. From flood detectors to bogus caller buttons, pressure pads to pill dispensers, it seems the service has all things covered. But I do feel a slight sense of sadness as I’m told about the reasoning behind the motion sensors that the service provides.
“A lot of people worry about dying and nobody finding them,” Clive says. “Sometimes people are lying in bed really ill and not able to get up, so this tells us that they’re not about and not moving.” With most of these potentially lifesaving devices costing just 30p a week, it’s easy to see why the service is so popular, and the installation process is quick and easy too. “If somebody needed one desperately, we could have one in that day. It’s quite good really, we do work pretty fast if we need to,” Clive says.
He explains to me how installation is done by people who work for the city council, and once installed, it just needs to be programmed in and hey presto, away we go. He says: “In terms of programming it, we can do it from here or they can do it with their laptop, all that needs doing is putting in what number the base unit is, to make sure it dials the right number.”
Improving the service
After all the good the service does, could they possibly do any more? Well the answer is yes. From April 1, 2018 a new service will be up and running where calls will be dealt with directly by the team, rather than them calling relatives first.
“These things are called lifelines, there’s a clue in the name,” Clive says. And I can tell from the enthusiasm in his face, that he just loves working at the heart of this life-saving service.